Board members reversed the agreement with Vermont Gas at their meeting Monday evening. They acknowledge discussing the proposed deal in a closed meeting in 2014, but one member said Monday that there was a misunderstanding about whether the deal was finalized at that point.
Residents had complained that the board improperly reached the deal in secret.
The reversal means Vermont Gas will seek to renegotiate a deal that critics said gave away a pipeline easement for too little in return. The pipeline is to run 41 miles from Colchester to Middlebury. Already 11 miles are complete, reaching as far as Williston.
“We’re fortunate that people intervened, and fortunate it came to light that we violated the open meeting law — unintentionally — and we had the chance to slow this down and do it the right way,” said Selectboard member Andrea Morgante.
The right way, Morgante said, will include much more public participation.
In exchange for their agreement not to contest eminent domain proceedings needed for the company to cross Hinesburg’s Geprags Park, Selectboard members in 2014 negotiated several conditions from Vermont Gas, Morgante said.
“We were assuming the documents would come back to us, and we’d make the documents public before we took a vote,” Morgante said after Monday’s meeting. But board members say they didn’t realize the agreement had gone into effect until earthmoving equipment showed up in town recently.
Residents filed a complaint alleging the Selectboard violated the state’s open meeting law by approving the agreement in executive session, a type of meeting to which the public is not privy.
According to a copy of the agreement on the town’s website, it would have granted Vermont Gas the right to clear a 50-foot swath to accommodate the pipeline and whatever “surface or subsurface appurtenances and facilities as reasonably deemed necessary or convenient by VGS for its operation or maintenance.” Vermont Gas would have had the right to temporarily install a second pipeline for the purpose of repairs or relocation and to abandon the pipelines in place.
Dumont said it would have allowed structures associated with the pipeline, and access roads, to be built where Vermont Gas determined they’re needed.
Vermont Gas agreed to pay the town roughly $75,000 in exchange for the easement.
A company spokeswoman, Beth Parent, said the utility will need to renegotiate the deal.
The Hinesburg park represents one of four eminent domain processes Vermont Gas must complete in order to build the pipeline, Parent said. The company will need to have those completed soon in order to remain on time and on budget as the construction season nears, she said.
“We remain committed to reaching a resolution with the town, and hopefully we’ll do so in the near future,” Parent said.
Monday’s Selectboard vote against the gas company agreement is one of several setbacks for the project in its attempts to gain easements through eminent domain proceedings. Several of the company’s eminent domain hearings have been disrupted or prevented by protesters, as have repeated attempts to bring appraisers to properties to initiate the proceedings.
Pipeline opponents Tuesday took a new tack and installed a member of the anti-pipeline group Rising Tide Vermont in a tree near Monkton that activists say stands where an access road needs to be built by April 1.
The company’s permit to build the road expires after that date, said Will Bennington, of Rising Tide Vermont.
Parent in an email did not confirm the date or its implications but said the company is “not constructing in that area and (has) no immediate plans to do so.”
Alex Prolman weathered his first night on a platform 30 feet up the 40-foot butternut without incident, Bennington said. Prolman will remain in the tree for the foreseeable future, Bennington said.
“We saw a Vermont Gas vehicle drive by, so they’re aware of the situation,” Bennington said.
The property condemnation proceedings come after the Public Service Board, in a much-anticipated ruling, said Jan. 8 that the pipeline will still benefit ratepayers even though it has increased dramatically in price.
The order says the Public Service Board will not reopen its examination of the pipeline, which effectively means the project can go ahead.
Opponents of the pipeline say a variety of circumstances changed since the board issued the original certificate of public good in 2013, most notably that cost estimates have ballooned from $86.6 million to $154 million. The opponents say the project represents a net harm to residents.
The order from the board incorporated an agreement that Vermont Gas reached last year with the Department of Public Service, the arm of the Shumlin administration charged with representing ratepayers.
Under that deal, ratepayers in Franklin, Addison and Chittenden counties will cover $134 million of the pipeline’s costs. The board emphasized in its order that this document played a significant role in its decision.
Vermont Gas Systems CEO Don Rendall said the agreement means the company bears the risk of the remaining $20 million in costs, plus any additional increases.
